GPO Technical Pamphlets for Workmen

The relationship between the General Post Office Engineering Department and the Royal Signals has always been close. From the Great War onwards, Post Office engineering staff have joined the Territorial Army and between the Wars, the majority of the men in the various R Signals regiments of the TA were PO engineers. We must not forget the women who were switchboard operators with the GPO and performed similar duties in R Signals after the outbreak of war. Much of the information on this site cocerns the work of R Signals with operational uints, but the higher formations also had huge communication requirements, often over great distances. In particular, communications between operational units and their supply bases was the responsibility of the Lines of Communication (LofC) organization, and R Signals also provided a great deal of communication facilities both to, and within the UK.
In the first half of the 20th century, the available channels of electronic communication were, in order of appearance, telegraphy, magneto telephony, type printing telegraphy and automatic telephony. But, of course, that was exactly how the GPO's public services developed and with them, the techniques and expertise of GPO engineering staff. So the army's requirement was exactly matched by the the GPO's systems and services - hence the realtionship between the two. More details on this can be found in the excellent memoir "Signal Venture" by Brig. L H Harris, Head of Telecomms for SHAEF and latterly GPO Chief Engineer.
Just like the Army, the GPO placed emphasis on training programmes and published a large number of training documents, amongst which was a long series of pamphlets called "Technical Pamphlets for Workmen". These provide an interesting insight into the technology which would be second nature to any GPO engineer who also served with R Signals.

The list below contains every pamphlet in the series, most of which are available for download, some with more than one issue date. These documents do not require passwords - simply right-click the link on the date and select "Save As".

We don't have all the pamphlets (yet), and if you can supply any of the missing ones, please let us know via the Wireless-Set-No19 group.

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